What is modern education?

Two years ago I attended a podium discussion on the future of education in Berlin. The main discussion point for the politicians was to improve the availability of tablets and Wifi in schools.

Even though I was surprised that in the year 2019 there were in fact schools without Wifi in Germany, I was also thinking: These people here don’t get the point, do they?

Introducing technology into a broken system will do a lot but not fix it.

With a couple of years of working experience under my belt now, the gleaming era of AI waiting for us, I have never seen a more outdated view of education than this evening.

Education in its current form is mostly a top-down, authoritative process in which “experts” determine the curricula for a highly specialised workforce. It’s Taylorism. The human reduced to be a cog in the larger machine of the economy.

Wilhelm Humboldt saw education not merely as a process of transferring skills but as the formation of an individual’s character. Humboldt encouraged the active exploration and engagement with manifold ideas and concepts to actively form one’s character and interests.

The current education system creates conformity and is taught by people in schools and universities that lack entrepreneurial spirit and to a large extent the touch with reality.

I know that in academia people boast about their theoretical background as “thinkers" and ridicule applied thinking. But by now I tend to value the practical arts. I like to learn from people who’ve walked the talk. Not just reiterate facts from a book or a PhD thesis.

Modern education should offer options to students, encourage them to build things in the real world, encourage them to fail, encourage them to engage with topics they are interested in, encourage them to make use of the increasing courses offered by non-traditional educators.

In this sense, the teacher become more of a guide or a coach and not the authority of knowledge.

Coming back to that podium discussion: Technology is the new normal, it is not a sign of modern education.